The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (www.irrodl.org) is a refereed e-journal that aims to advance research, theory and best practice in open and distance education research.

Tuition is the same for Wisconsin residents, out-of-state and international students.

There is no registration fee and no program application.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

As an educator you already understand the importance of efficient and accurate assessment. Have you realized how powerful assessment is in the online learning environment?

Assessment has the capability to drive interactions and engagement.

Assessment can minimize plagiarism

Assessment can strengthen higher-level learning.

Assessment can streamline blended learning environments.

Learn what is needed to become an excellent online teacher and course designer while developing your electronic record keeping systems and methods for evaluating discussion postings and group projects.

You may be a teacher searching for free technology tools for teachers which enable them to watch and share YouTube videos with students in classroom in a safe and friendly way without any distractions or offensive comments that may scatter their attention, and in that case, Safe YouTube is for you.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Here's a great way to safely use YouTube videos in your classroom. This system create a 'safe url' that blocks out ads that your students don't need to see. Give it a try. Free!

Teaching online or in the classroom can be a challenging profession from many angles. Teachers have an enormous amount of responsibilities the moment they begin working in the profession.

Although educators should have ongoing professional development and practicum experience, there are many moments in a teacher’s day when he/she may need assistance or need to seek out an exceptional mentor.

Here are four ways mentor teachers help in the classroom-either online or in the classroom.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Teachers helping teachers is a model that works -- especially in the online classroom.

"Although dubbing a video can be a great source of entertainment, it actually can be very educational as well. There are quite a few learning activities for students when they take a video, remove the original audio, and add their own narration."

To make the process of assigning students to groups and getting them going on editing the group’s template easier I coded an Add-on script: Group Docs Maker. This allows you to copy and paste your roster of students into the spreadsheet and automatically create a copy of a template for each group. Each group members name is automagically appended to the document title.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Here's a clever timesaver when using Google Docs for collaboration from Alice Keeler.

I’ve been asked about the podcasting equipment setup and software that we use on the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. After 220 episodes in one year and over 430K downloads, we’ve settled on a configuration we like. In this post, I’ll share the setup and help you get started.

“Ideally it would be great for an online instructor to have taken an online class,” said Susan Yochum, provost at Seton Hill University, in Pennsylvania. But, she added, “the biggest issue is our faculty have a lot of responsibilities, a heavy teaching load. It’s really a time issue.”

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Are you an online teacher? Did you ever take an online class as a student? Interesting situation.

It’s a free, four-week MOOC run by Moodle HQ, designed for anybody who wants to use the Moodle learning platform. We also run the MOOCs twice a year, after every major Moodle release.

Our Learn Moodle 3.4 MOOC Basics is starting on 8 January 2018 and recently we talked to Mary Cooch, our Community Educator and Elizabeth Dalton, our Research Analyst, to tell us what’s new for this upcoming MOOC.

The six basic techniques presented here are all tailored with respect to our audience, our faculty, who are adult learners at the core. The purpose of this area is not to explain exactly how to set up the training, but rather to instill these overarching principles.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Superb open source materials. This is a article from TOPKit, the Teaching Online Preparation Toolkit - licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonComercial ShareAlike 4.0 international license.

This course is offered as part of UW-Stout's Math Specialist Graduate Certificate. Take it stand alone for professional development credit. Or complete all courses to earn the certificate (which can be applied to our online masters degree program).

Joe told me that after his high school graduation, he’d put off college because of his fears of the classroom environment. He’d decided to enroll in this, one class at his local community college, because he had the option to take his courses online. Joe loved the online environment, and rather than feeling like it was his second-best option or that he was a second-best learner, he was empowered and eager. I imagined him pursuing his degree while maturity had a chance to do its job, gaining confidence in his ideas in written form first so that he could begin to take more extroverted baby steps in the future.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

An important essay by Karen Costa on the benefits of online learning for introverted students.

“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Theodore Roosevelt

This is an important reminder that teaching is all about building a relationship with your students. In fact, in today’s world, when information is at our fingertips, we don’t need to go to school to learn facts and figures — a quick Google search, a glance at Wikipedia, or a question posed to Siri will usually result in answers to specific questions.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Here's a thoughtful piece on teaching that will remind us all that teaching is a calling.

The “find and replace” feature in Word quickly makes an old syllabus ready for a new course. Use it too many times and thinking about the course settles into a comfortable rut. Yes, we may change more than just the dates, but when was the last time we considered something beyond what needs to go on the syllabus? The literature answers that question with a few definitive conclusions and a host of possibilities. Here are some thoughts, offered with just a bit of provocation, in the hopes they might reenergize our thinking about the syllabus and what it can accomplish in the course, for students and for the teacher.

It’s terribly confusing, but perhaps no coincidence, that three of the world’s most prominent consumer technology companies—Apple, Google, Microsoft—each boast a “Classroom” tool aimed at K-12 educators and students. After all, what better way to secure a foothold in the market than impressing one’s brand to future consumers at a young age?

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Here's an overview article to help you understand the current k-12 online classroom environment.

More and more educators are discovering the importance of having their students build some form of digital presence. Blogging is an excellent way for students to create their own online space, but what do you call this?

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

Blogging puts the power of the press into everyone's hands. Understand how to help your students become bloggers; read this article.

Apple Classroom was released in March 2016, but from things I read online, or hear when talking to other educators, I feel that it still gets mistakenly compared to Google Classroom. I can absolutely see why that happens. Both products have very similar names, and both were created to help solve technology problems in the classroom. However, the truth is, these two products could not be more different. So, in this post, I wanted to take some time to run through everything that Apple Classroom can do, and compare that to Google Classroom, in order to give you some ideas on how you can use these useful tech tools at your school.

There is no topic in education that is more furiously debated than assessment. Of course, self-assessment tends to raise even more alarm bells. The notion of students assessing themselves is difficult for many educators to get around, but they’re warming to the idea. If our students learn to ask the right self-assessment questions and keep themselves accountable, the results in learning improvement can be amazing.

Dennis T OConnor's insight:

This infographic delivers a powerful message about the growth mindset.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.